International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 8, No.

7; 2018
ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

The Use of Part-of-Speech Tagging on E-Newspaper in Improving

Grammar Teaching Pedagogy
Ruzana Omar1, Sarah Yusoff2, Radzuwan Ab Rashid3, Azweed Mohamad3 & Kamariah Yunus3
1
Academy of Language Studies, University Technology MARA, Malaysia
2
Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, University Technology MARA, Malaysia
3
Faculty of Languages and Communication, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Malaysia
Correspondence: Ruzana Omar, Academy of Language Studies, University Technology MARA, Malaysia.
E-mail: ruzana@tganu.uitm.edu.my

Received: May 23, 2018 Accepted: June 20, 2018 Online Published: November 27, 2018
doi:10.5539/ijel.v8n7p1 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v8n7p1

Abstract
One of the components of learning English is Grammar, and the intrinsic part of it is Parts of Speech (PoS),
where the majority of Malaysian students in higher institutions are still grappling to understand its use in
sentences. This study aims to compare conventional method to e-learning method on its effectiveness in the
teaching and learning of PoS. The application of Stanford PoS tagging has been used to analyze the PoS in every
single word of the sentences extracted from the articles in The New Straits Times Online (NST Online). This
quantitative research study adopted a comparative analysis in analyzing its findings. The results were statistically
analyzed using The Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) for statistical analysis. These findings of
the research reveal a significance difference between the score from students using E-paper and the score from
students not using E-paper in learning Grammar. Independent t-test was carried out to compare mean between
the two groups. The result shows a significance difference (p-value = 0.007, t = -2.774) between the two groups
of students’ score. The mean performance of the students using E-paper shows a higher percentage compared to
those not using E-paper. As students nowadays spend most of their time with electronic gadgets, this is an
innovative way to capture their interest to spend more time on quality reading materials via electronic newspaper,
simultaneously learning Grammar by going to the crux of its core by identifying the PoS of each word in
sentences using new pedagogical strategy of PoS tagging.
Keywords: PoS Tagging, E-newspaper, grammar teaching pedagogy, E-learning, Parts-of-Speech
1. Introduction
It is a well-known fact, that teaching English Grammar is an arduous task causing lack of motivation and
concentration to learners in developing the learning of grammar-based inputs of English Language in the
classroom (Chowdhury, 2014). Due to that reason, it has caused students to lose interests and they considered
learning Grammar as boring and dry, eventhough they are aware of the importance of mastering it. Thus,
educators need to find ways and strategies to make teaching Grammar, specifically Part of speech (PoS) to be
more interesting and comprehensible to attract the attention of the English language learners.
In the same vein, students of higher learning institutions in Malaysia, despite many years of learning English
language are still grappling with their English Language basic concept of Grammar, in general, and on many
times forming incorrect sentence constructions in their academic writing (Rashid, Rahman, & Yunus, 2017). That
is concurred by Darmi & Albion (2013), who said that debates continue about the reasons as to why local
graduates are not competent in the L2, i.e. English language.
With the help of computer and internet, E-learning brings the changes of pedagogical strategies and ultimately
improves the efficiency of teaching and learning. If we do not change, the new generation will not be satisfied
with school education, even for the next 30 years (Huiwei, 2012). Thus, this is a small contribution to the process
of teaching and learning Grammar in the era of technology. As students nowadays are very attached to their
gadgets, this study will in one way or another help to contribute ideas for the English language lecturers and
teachers to teach Grammar in a fun way. As stated by Shyamlee & Phil (2012), the tradition of English teaching
has been drastically changed with the remarkable entry of technology.

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The integration of e-learning with English language learning will make a big impact on students learning process.
Hence, this study has advocated learning English grammar via reading an online newspaper (e-paper). Mehta
(2010) concurred that reading newspapers on regular basis is considered as a good practice and it would produce
a great impact to learners in schools and higher institutions. It is observed that the students who read newspapers
regularly are more proficient and aware of the updates of local and international scenarios. By reading
newspapers, the students would become more knowledgeable on issues pertaining to various subjects including
social-political-business issues, sports, entertainment, education and various others. Furthermore, the practice of
using English newspapers not only helps the students in the ESL classroom but also in the mundane affairs of
their life. They will be encouraged to improve their vocabulary, grammar and thinking skills as regular
newspaper reading can provide them with opportunity to express and exchange their ideas on a wide variety of
issues.
Part-of-speech tagging aims to assign a specific tag to each word of a sentence to indicate the function of that
word in a specific context based on certain guidelines (Btoush, Alarabeyyat, & Isa, 2016). The various
applications of PoS tagging would be very helpful in assisting the language learners in identifying grammar
correction and recognizing the many categorization of part-of-speech in sentences, namely nouns, verbs,
pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and many other tags. The process of assigning description to the given word is
called Tagging. The descriptor is called tag. The tag may indicate one of the parts-of-speech like noun, pronoun,
verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. The ambiguity which is identified in the
tagging module is resolved using the grammar rules. The main challenge in POS tagging is to resolving the
ambiguity in possible POS tags for a word. Despite the challenge, the great benefits in making the students to
recognize and comprehend the usage of the words in sentences in English language articles, overrule it.
This study aims to compare conventional methods to e-learning methods on its effectiveness in the teaching and
learning of PoS. Another purpose of this study is to help the English Language lecturers or teachers to find out
the most effective way of teaching PoS in class. In the research study, the use of PoS tagging on E-newspaper
has been proven to improve students’ performance in Grammar on the course that they were taking, English for
Academic Purpose. New Straits Times Online had been chosen as the source for the news article to be analyzed
using the PoS tagging approach of learning, as it is known as an established newspaper in Malaysia, having been
found in 1845 as ‘The Straits Times’, and was reestablished in 1974, as ‘New Straits Times’. It has been used by
many educators previously as a teaching tool in the classroom not only for primary and secondary schools but
also in higher institutions. Hence, this approach of teaching is highly recommended to be applied in teaching
Grammar, specifically PoS as it has dual purposes of language skills, namely reading and grammar. This
approach of teaching would also help learners to instill the awareness of reading quality reading materials rather
than learning Grammar by going to the crux of its core through analyzing the PoS for each word in the sentences.
2. Review of Related Literature
The use of a printed newspaper as a teaching tool in classrooms has been practiced for quite some time in
schools and higher institutions in Malaysia. Due to its immense benefits to the improvements of student’s
proficiency in English language, it is still popular up to now. Reading newspapers can help students acquire
higher level of proficiency in English (Ahmmed, 2016) where teachers are using it for various kind of activities.
E-newspaper, somehow, is yet to be tapped its relevance as a teaching tool.
Now that the e-reading devices have grown in number, readers are facing a new presentation of electronic text
changing the venues of their reading experiences (Brown, 2001). Today’s reading experience differs substantially
compared to the times when there was only printed text. An increasing amount of electronic text—e-mails, web
pages, text-messages, online catalogues and databases, e-newspapers and e-books are being used by the readers
of twenty-first century. Hence, it is high time, and just wise for the educators in this century to make use of the
new technology, e-newspaper in this context, for their Grammar teaching pedagogy to attract students’ interests.
Based on the research by Darmi & Albion (2013), almost 80 percent of students are inclined to read a printed
digital text in order to understand the text with clarity. Also, nearly 68% of the respondents are being reported to
understand and retain more information when they read printed media. On the contrary, merely 4 percent
reported otherwise.
As for grammar teaching, conventional method is still widely being practiced in the classrooms (Wotley, 2017).
Nevertheless, using PoS tagging for language teaching pedagogy is new. In a previous research of PoS tagging,
Chowdhury et al. (2004) implemented a rule based PoS tagger. Their study mainly dealt with analysing the part
of morphology rather than analysing using the PoS tagger to analyse sentences from articles taken from an
E-newspaper. A morphological analyzer indeed provides some PoS tag information, but using a PoS-tagger on

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E-newspapper, somehow, is yet to be tappped to be em

mployed as a teaaching tool. It is a new trendd.
3. Method
dology
3.1 The Stuudy Populationn
The study was conducted on 95 first semester studennts of University Technologyy MARA (UiT TM) who had taken
t
a course oof English for Academic Purrpose, which iis a requiremeent for first sem
mester studentts in the unive
ersity.
The sampllings compriseed of 44 Chemiical Engineerinng students annd 51 students of Mechanicall Engineering.
3.2 Data C
Collection
The subjeccts were assignned as experimmental and conntrol groups. Both groups toook English for Academic Purrpose
course, fouur hours a weeek, and the appplication took ttwo hours a week for the durration of sevenn weeks. Data were
gathered bbased on their Final Semesteer Test, wheree the focus waas on the Gram mmar section, which carries 10%
out of 40%% of the overaall results. The results weree statistically aanalyzed usingg The Statisticcal Package fo
or the
Social Scieence (SPSS).
In carryingg out this activvity, the particcipants were rrequired to gett an article froom an e-newsppaper, namely New
Straits Tim
mes online. Stuudents usually choose the maaterials in subjects which theey are interesteed in. Interest in
i the
material ittself is “direct interest” to produce better leearning (Huawwei, 2012). Folllowing that, w
words of design nated
PoS were highlighted from fr the articlle. The identiffied words weere then categorized based oon their respe ective
category, nnamely Nounss, Verbs, Adverbs, Adjectivves, Conjunctions or Pronouuns, into its reespective colu umns.
Self-checkking was then doned S tagging on thhe accuracy off the categorization
using thee application oof Stanford PoS
of words.
How the pprocess was connducted is sum
mmarized below
w.
Step 1 - Seelection of artiicles from New
ws Straits Timees online (NST
T Online).
Step 2 - Paarts of Speech identification,, by highlightinng the designaated words from
m the chosen aarticle.
Step 4 - TThe selected words
w would be categorized into their reespective cateegory of Part-of-Speech, na
amely
Nouns, Veerbs, Adjectives or Articles, tto name a few, into its respecctive columns.
Step 5 - Thhe assessmentss was done viaa participants’ self-checking using an appliication of Stanford PoS Tagg
ging
Step 6 - Thhis activity woould be carriedd out on weeklyy basis until thhe desired resuults of the studeents is achieved.
4. Data An
nalysis and Fiindings
4.1 Demoggraphic Profilee
Figure 1 shhows the percentage comparrison of responndents from C Chemical Enginneering (EH1110) and Mecha anical
Engineerinng (EM110) sttudents. The peercentage com mprised of 45% % Chemical Enngineering studdents while another
53% weree first semester Mechanicaal Engineeringg students. Thhey were seleected from the same facultty of
Engineerinng. The differeent courses beiing chosen waas for the purpose of showinng the positive effects from usage
u
of e-newsspaper on thee group of sttudents with llower proficieency in Engliish Language, i.e., Diplom ma in
Mechanicaal Engineeringg where the reequirement forr entering the university, forr this group off students, is just a
“pass” in M
Malaysian Higgher Educationn Examinationn (SPM), comppared to the sttudents of Cheemical Engineering
where the requirement too enter into thee course is a crredit in Englishh Language foor the same exaamination.

Figure 11. Comparisonn in percentagee between grouups

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Figuure 2. Compariison in percenttage between ee-paper and without e-paper

4.2 Cross Tabulation Tabble Between F

Four Groups

Table 1. Comparison bettween e-newsppaper and withhout e-newspapper between grroups

Percentagge
EH11B EH1C EM11A EM1B
Grade Witthout E-Newspap
per Withh E-Newspaper
A (8 – 10) 14.229 8.70 33.333 25.00
B (5 – 7) 61.990 69.57 48.15 66.67
C (1 – 4) 23.881 21.74 18.522 8.33

Figure 3. Comparison
C aper between groups
beetween e-newsppaper and withhout e-newspap

4.3 Indepeendent T-Test

This studyy was interesteed to know whhether there is a significancee difference beetween the scoore of learning with
E-newspapper and score without E-new wspaper. Indeppendent t-test was carried ouut to compare mean between the
two groupps. The result presented
p Table 3 shows that there is a significance difference (p--value = 0.007
in T 7, t =
-2.774) beetween the tw wo groups off student scorre. This meanns that meann performancee of student using u
E-newspapper is better than without usiing E-newspapper.

Table 2. D
Descriptive stattistics
Status Sammple size Mean Standard Deviatiion
Without E-newsspaper 44 5.50 1.372
With E-newspapper 51 6.39 1.710

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Table 3. Independent samples test

t-value Degree of Significance Mean Difference Standard Error
freedom values Difference
-2.774 93 0.007 -0.892 0.332

Based on the results obtained from the data analysis, there is a significant difference of performance in terms of
percentage for each band. The group of Diploma in Chemical Engineering, EH1B and EH1C are the target
groups which use conventional method in learning PoS, whereas, the groups of Diploma in Mechanical
Engineering, EM1A and EM1B are two groups learning PoS using E-newspaper. Table 1 reveals that the
percentage of marks for Band A (8-10 marks) for groups with E-newspaper outperformed the groups without
E-newspaper where students using E-newspaper recorded 10% and 20% respectively compared to the group
without E-newspaper. Also, the percentage of students who earn Band C (1-4 marks) who use E-newspaper is
lower than the group without E-newspaper.
The comparison using Independent Samples t-Test also proves that there is a significant difference between the
two groups, score with e-newspaper and score without e-newspaper. This shows that the groups using the
E-newspaper performed better than the groups without E-newspaper in terms of Band A and Band C. Thus, the
use of E-Paper has definitely improved the students’ knowledge in PoS.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
Innovative teaching- Gadget embedded pedagogy is highly recommended to be applied by language educators to
instill the technology awareness in their teaching where it can attract students’ motivation to learn English,
specifically to understand PoS. One way to encourage improvement in teaching and learning efficiency is
through the use of PoS tagging on e-newspaper.
The effect of technology has become huge in teaching and learning the language where it can lead to advanced
learning results (Sharma, 2009). This is proven in this study, whereby, the use of PoS tagging on e-paper has
significantly improved the performance of language learners compared to the application of conventional
teaching method. Moreover, it will instill awareness on importance of reading a newspaper among students of
higher institutions.
As the fourth industrial revolution slowly emerging in our life, menacingly, for the conventional method
practitioners, language educators are threatened to hone their skill on language teaching pedagogy that could
entice new generation of students who are greatly attached to their gadgets to learn grammar.
Further research is recommended to be carried out using a PoS tagging, not restrictive to improving Grammar
learning, but also to improve other skills in English proficiency amongst the students of English as a second
language (ESL), as well as students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in their countries respectively.
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